Could my ears burn any hotter? Forget failure to use proper judgment; failure to interact with peers like a normal human is more like it. Staying at home and arguing with my dad about gymnastics would be better than this.
I turn toward my original target, the soccer field, ignoring Cassie’s silent laugh that turns to cackling. “You’re hazardous to my health,” I tell Marcos sternly. “I’m forwarding you my next hospital bill.”
“Me?” He jogs to keep up with me. I focus on the lights illuminating the field, blazing white against the dark sky. “I think you broke my nose.”
I feign an examination. His dark hair curls over his forehead, still mussed from our collision. I fight the urge to reach out and smooth them, the way Cassie would do to me. His nose, I might add, is as strong as his jaw. It would make for a fine profile on a coin. “Your septum might be a little deviated, but you should recover.”
Behind us, Cassie and Juliana whisper heatedly. Just like in the car, I’ve missed something between them.
Marcos holds my gaze, a small smile toying at his lips. Smartass and teasing.
I stare right back. One beat. Two. His smile widens. It makes me jittery, like I’m waiting for the judges to signal me.
Focus, Savannah. I turn away, find the lights again, and walk as fast as I can on legs that suddenly feel like liquid. “We’ve got a goddamn game to watch.”
THE BLEACHERS THUNDER with hundreds of feet stomping the metal. “Ponquogue! Ponquogue! What what what!” rises from the far side of the stands as I slide into the first available sliver of metal bleacher. I’m not sure what this battle cry is intended to inspire, but everyone around us whoops and cheers.
Marcos’s shoulder presses against mine, rocks again when Cassie and then Juliana slide in. Sit next to me! I want to call out to Cassie. I wait to catch her eye, but instead I’m met with curls as she faces Juliana.
It’s fine. I’m not a child. I can handle myself solo.
Hot dogs and high-fives pass from hand to hand. Maroon-and-white sweatshirts are everywhere, between them a few ambitious boys with faces painted half white and half red. Across the turf in the visitors’ stands, the purple and black Galway Beach fans boo all of Ponquogue’s cheers.
During my brother’s freshman year, the team earned the moniker “Tiny but Mighty” from an intrepid sports writer. (“Tiny but mighty!” Josh Wolfson crowed at every pasta party hosted at our house, in case there was the chance that someone in the neighborhood hadn’t heard him the first time. This was usually met by an inappropriate response that had my mother whisking me out of the kitchen.) They defeated a perennial powerhouse from Syracuse to clinch the state title, the first in school history, and thus tradition was solidified under the Gatorade shower. Small school, tremendous upsets.
“Monday’s cool?”
I blink. “Huh?”
“Tutoring.” Marcos turns to me, his breath brushing against my ear.
I’m saved from responding when the bleachers buckle as everyone around us rises in a roar of noise. Ponquogue’s finest take the field, their maroon-and-white uniforms not yet grass-stained.
My heart thumps with the same excitement I’d had when I’d stood for the national anthem before a meet. Same for when I’d stand up before the start of Richard’s games. Soon after, Cass and I would play under the bleachers when we grew bored of watching the boys endlessly run up and down the field.
Andreas bounds out to the center of the field for the coin toss. Marcos sticks his fingers in his mouth and lets out a sharp whistle, his elbow knocking into me.
“Yeah, Andreas!” I shout. Never mind that I’ve rarely talked to him outside of FrisbeeGate.
“You got this, Dre!” Marcos adds. “Let’s go!”
Andreas waves to the crowd with a cheeky grin, pausing momentarily to hike absurd orange socks over his shin guards.
Ponquogue wins the toss. “Yeah!” I shout again. Cassie leans all the way past Marcos to stare at me. “You okay, Savs?” she says. “Take it easy.”
Weirdly enough, I do feel okay. The stresses of my failures, the fact that fall is normally the time I’d be gearing up for competing–those facts feel minuscule under these blazing lights, under the possibility of witnessing something exciting.
I lean forward to meet her halfway, except the bleachers rattle with another thunderous pounding and I almost tip over. “Better than ever.”
A callused hand on my bicep tugs me back gently. I take a breath and inhale the scent of fresh cotton from Marcos’s sweatshirt. It’s tinged with something else– coconut shampoo, I think. The combination smells incredible. It makes me want to burrow my head in his sweatshirt for the winter.
Get a grip.
The lights shine off of Dimitri Bondarenko’s head before the ball is kicked into play. Five minutes later, Juliana shouts, “You gotta be kidding me, ref! Are you blind?” as Andreas earns a yellow card for tripping a six-foot-tall Galway Beach Purple Tiger.
At the end of the first half, Roberto Aguilar goes deep into enemy territory and shoots. It’s in. The crowd goes ballistic. Screams and hip thrusts like some sort of soccer dance. Maroon and white. Black and white and brown. Little kids bounce on their daddy’s shoulders as they’re lifted above the girls shouting nonsensically.
Whether or not it’s the love of Ponquogue soccer or the thrill of vanquishing Galway Beach on a Saturday night, the whole school must be here. The whole town. How many of them will forget the game by Monday? Which hand, raw now from clapping and fist-pumping on a cold night, wrapped its fingers around the marker to write UCK YOU SPICS?
“Nailed it!” Cassie shouts. She’s up on her feet, eyes shining in the heavy throb of the lights. Surrounded by every Ponquogue resident, she seems positively buoyant, floating on their excitement. I watch her for a moment until I leap to my feet too, shouting along with everyone else until that energy becomes part of me, until I stop wondering who did what and why.